How to Teach Your Child to Think

In a world that's growing more complex and competitive by the minute, the ability to think clearly and critically has never been more important. But how many of us devote any time to nurturing habits of serious, critical thought in our children—or in ourselves, for that matter? How can we help kids sharpen their minds for a highly competitive future? The first step, say experts, is to create a "thinking atmosphere" in your home. Here's how to begin:

Examine your own thinking about thinking. Most people mistake quick answers for intelligence, so we assume that a quick child is automatically a good thinker. Nothing could be more untrue. Quick answers are often not the deepest answers, or the best ones, and placing too much value on quick thinking just promotes intellectual laziness. Meanwhile, the slow, reflective children—the ones teachers scold for daydreaming—often have deeper insights than their "brighter" counterparts. By ignoring them, we are overlooking our greatest intellectual resources.

Start early. Brenda Richardson, mother and teacher, starts five-year-olds thinking by reading simple poems. One of her favorite examples is: "If all the world were apple pie/ And all the sea were ink/ And all the trees were bread and cheese/ What would we have to drink?" Then she leads the children into other thought-provoking questions, such as: "If a sentence begins with 'if', does that mean it's not true?"

"You'd be surprised at the thoughts that bubble up," says Richardson. "The youngsters learn a way of reading and thinking that can last a lifetime."

Give children something to think about. Take your kids to museums, read together, watch TV side by side. Then talk about what you've seen and heard. "Don't just walk through a museum and admire the exhibits," psychologist Alan Steinberg says. "Throw out questions. Challenge the kids' imaginations. 'What might the earth be like if dinosaurs came back?"'

Involve the whole family. Good thinking habits can be learned best in a small group with plenty of give and take. Even the youngest child has ideas that should be brought out and listened to. A formal curriculum isn't necessary. Dinner talk about the events of the day can provide excellent opportunities for instruction. "Can you think of a different way you might have answered the teacher, Mike?"

Tell jokes. Humor can help teach kids that there's more than one way of looking at things. A pun, for instance, gets a laugh because it looks at words from a different perspective. "Bob Hope had a disappointing Christmas," goes one old joke, "He only got one golf club—and it didn't even have a swimming pool."

Once you've established a thinking atmosphere, it's time for step two—training your kids to use the following method of critical thinking:

Look at all sides. One technique taught by Edward de Bono, founder of the Cognitive Research Trust program (a widely used method of teaching thinking), is the "PMI." This involves looking for the Pluses, Minuses and Interesting points about any given question.

Edward de Bono once asked a group of 30 ten-year-olds. "How would you like to receive $5 a week for attending school?" All 30 enthusiastically voted for the idea. Then he asked them to "do a PMI." After three minutes of listing pluses, minuses and interesting points about the proposal, 29 out of 30 had changed their minds. Among the minuses: "Our parents wouldn't give us allowances" and "The school would raise prices for meals." Further and deeper thought had convinced the group that the obvious answer wasn't necessarily the best.

The PMI method is easy enough to recreate at home. It's fun to let all family members take turns proposing questions, then start brainstorming the pluses, minuses and interesting points as you can while a group secretary notes them all down in appropriate columns on a piece of paper. One crucial rule of de Bono's method is that no thought should be rejected. If someone's idea seems dumb, ask them to clarify it. Usually you'll find they're just looking the question from an unexpected perspective.